IGN Goes Hands-on with WorldGaming

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The competitive online gaming service lets you wage war and real money.

By Jimmy Thang

Do you think you're good at games? WorldGaming.com, a new gaming and social networking web site that will go live later this year, is going to let you put your money where your mouth is. WorldGaming is a competitive gaming service that allows you to use real money to bet on your gaming skills. While this might sound like gambling, WorldGaming simply wants to bring the local tournament scene into the comforts of your own living room. However, in addition to participating in large scale tournaments, WorldGaming also allows you to wage gaming warfare with individuals from within its online community. I recently had the opportunity to go hands-on with the closed beta, and from what I saw, it really lets you put up or shut up.

Staying true to its name as much as possible, any 18+ year-old gamer in the world can participate in WorldGaming, as long as their jurisdiction approves of it (online competitive gaming isn't legal in some territories). Luckily, WorldGaming is going to be available in over 100 countries around the world, including Canada, Europe, the UK, and the majority of the US.

So how does WorldGaming work? Rather than going for an ad-driven approach, the web service charges a 10% management fee over individual matches. In tournaments, WorldGaming only takes $25 of the pot if it exceeds $250.

Check out profiles.

In many ways, WorldGaming's set up is a lot like Facebook and MySpace. You pick a username, register, create a profile, and then get access to a home page, editable profile, message center, blog, friends list, and more. Much like the other social networking web sites, registration is completely free. After you get your profile situated and update your games list, you'll be able to participate in many bracket-style tournaments. What makes WorldGaming tournaments interesting is that they uniquely distribute the entrance fees so that if you win one match, you'll be able to get most, if not all, of your entrance fee back. Of course, if you don't want to participate in massive tournaments, you can challenge individual community members to one-on-one matches. You'll be able to choose from a variety of titles across the PlayStation 2, PlayStation 3, and Xbox 360 platforms. WorldGaming is supporting most of the major sports franchises (Madden, Fight Night, NHL 09 etc.) as well as popular titles like Halo 3 and Resistance. You'll be able to wage as little as $1, and if you think you're really good at a certain game, you can put up to a $1,000 on the line. Transactions can be made through either PayPal or all major credit cards.

Cutting to the logistics, how does one challenge an opponent? In WorldGaming, you initiate duels by looking through a respective game's online lobby. From here you can check out players' profiles, view their win/loss records, and then wage war. Before you do this, you must set up the rules and present it to your opponent through a challenge card. You'll be able to chat with your opponent if he wants to amend the rules, but if he accepts, then the battle can commence.

Most of the sports games that WorldGaming supports have WorldGaming lobbies built into their online servers. When I played Fight Night Round 3, a WorldGaming lobby was already set up. However, if a certain game does not have a built-in WorldGaming lobby, it is up to the host to create the match and invite the other player.

What happens if you agree to a match but don't show up? Unfortunately, you forfeit the game. Fortunately, WorldGaming allows you to cancel matches ahead of time. In addition, duels can take place up to 10 minutes before the scheduled time period or up to an hour after.

Accept the challenge.

To ensure fair play, match setups that deviate from the set rules will not process. WorldGaming tracks whether or not the agreed upon rules were properly enforced. In an attempt to maintain the integrity of the system, after a match, WorldGaming lets you rate your opponent on a five "globe" rating scale system. Much like eBay, you can also leave comments about the individual after your match is over. This helps the community stay in check. While some gamers may try to cheat the system with disconnects, things like that will be tracked and will automatically be treated as a forfeit. However, truly disconnected players will have the opportunity to speak with WorldGaming's customer service if something like that does really occur. To further bolster the safety of the environment, players can have only one ID.

While WorldGaming isn't fully supporting PC games, the company may explore avenues with the platform down the road. The main reason that WorldGaming isn't supporting PCs is that the company feels that cheating may be a problem when you factor in skilled hackers. However, this is not to say that WorldGaming will not support the PC in any way, shape, or form. The service will offer built-in competitive flash games like Chess, Checkers, Hearts, and more.

While competitive gaming may seem like fun and games, a service such as WorldGaming might raise some ethical concerns. IGN was able to conduct a Q&A with WorldGaming's President and Founder Willaim Levy. In it he addresses potential addictive gambling habits, community outrage, and other potential dangers that the service might cause.